Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Who are the Republicans?

I must admit to not really understanding in many ways the Republican Party.

This is, after all, the party of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt.

It used to be that there were adults in the Republican party, people who understood that working together for the betterment of this country was more important than ideological purity or craven political gain.

I disagreed with Ronald Reagan on almost every issue. His policies of tax cuts and deregulation and spending more and more borrowed money on defense spending that dwarfs what is spend by our prospective adversaries exploded the deficit and gave us the Savings and Loan collapse that cost $500Billion to fix. And the legacy of his insane policies haunts us to this day with every Republican worshipping at the Altar of Reagan in California.

Ronald Reagan could not get nominated for County Commissioner by today's Republican party. He was too liberal, to willing to cooperate with Democrats to actually get things done. He recognized that he had to raise taxes to reign in the explosion in the deficit that his own policies had created.

As a Republican candidate in today's America, he would be less likely to get nominated than Buddy Roemer.

Today's Republican Party has abandoned everything that Reagan stood for. Reagan compromised about taxes and actually raised taxes 6 times. He supported immigration reform granting amnesty to millions of undocumented aliens. As governor he signed the most liberal abortion in the land years before Roe vs. Wade. He would actually cooperate with Tip O'Neil, the Democratic Speaker of the House. Today's Republicans insist that the only way to reduce the deficit is by cutting everything except defense spending. They insist that those they disagree with must be Communists or Socialists or Hate America.

They think that attacking President Obama for anything and everything that he does somehow constitutes a policy. Even when he does the things they earlier encouraged him to do. In one of the first Republican Presidential Debates EVERY one of the candidates agreed that they would reject a deal to reduce the deficit that was 90% spending cuts and only 10% tax increases. Their rigidity is their hallmark. They were willing to literally let the country default on its obligations in their monomaniacal insistence on reducing the deficit exclusively through spending cuts. They talk allot about how bad the economy is yet block every attempt by this President to actually spur the economy. Republicans originally proposed a deficit commission and then turned against it when President Obama embraced it. Obamacare, with it's individual mandate, strongly resembles the mandatory health insurance program passed in Massachusetts by then Governor Romney. Now that same Romney promises to repeal Obamacare as one of his first acts in office if elected President.

Look at the current leading candidates for the Republican nomination.

Mitt Romney is widely thought of in the media as the adult in the room. This is the same man who has changed every major position in his political life since his time as governor. This same man who claimed that his actually residence for voting purposes was in the basement of his son's house. And this is the adult in this group of dwarfs.

And next we have Herman Cain. This mental giant has actually proposed doing something instead of just promising to repeal everything that President Obama has done. But his 999 proposal for tax reform would increase taxes on the poor and cut taxed on the wealthy and would increase the deficit since it wouldn't bring in as much money as the current system does. And we asked how is program would actually work in detail, he literally said he had no idea. IT'S HIS IDEA. You would think that he might want to have an idea bout how his idea would work.

Next we have Mr Texas Economic Miracle himself, the Governor of the big state of Texas, Rick Perry. This mangles the language more then even his predecessor in Austin, George Bush, did. It doesn't appear that he is that much brighter than Shrub either. But he does like executing people. And his record for executions is apparently a great applause line in Republican Debates. He wants us all to follow Texas's example by failing our schools, creating more minimum wage jobs than anyone else, and Praying for rain while denying the realities of Global Warming. To his credit he actually seems to have a heart sometimes. He supports for Texas' version of the Dream Act and the HPV vaccination program which will literally save thousands or even millions of lives. Of course those policies are the least popular parts of his platform among the Republican faithful.

Michelle Bachman had her brief moment in the sun, but quickly showed that she was even too nucking futs for even the Baggers she tried to appeal to. The threw here aside for Perry before trying to throw him aside for Christie and now threw them all aside for Cain.

And the rest aren't even a good side show.

Who are these people

Is this really the cream of the Republican Party?

Unfortunately I think it is. This really is the best of what is left in that once great and proud party.